Chapter One: "We Die"

—SIX YEARS AGO IN TBILISI, GEORGIA—

"What now? What do we do?"

Ajay's question is aimed at her, but there isn't enough time to say anything more than the obvious.

She pulls up her balaclava and pronounces the truth, "We die."

She pulls the pin on her stun grenade and throws it to the floor, white light and an ear-deafening sound exploding in front of the gunmen facing them. All hell breaks loose as the team scatters, the hostages start screaming and gunfire rips down the corridor.

—Four days later—

As soon as she feels a pair of eyes lingering too long on her, Rosemary pulls back into the shadows. The ragged, dusty burqa she's liberated from a rubbish bin covers her from head to toe, but she still feels exposed. Her disguise is as just another refugee beggar, complete with wooden crutch. It means that most people in the marketplace ignore her, but something tells her that someone is paying just a little too much attention. She hopes it isn't an Islamophobe; yesterday she was spat at. As if the racists weren't bad enough, she has to avoid the authorities who take a dim view towards beggars. Georgia has no love of Afghan refugees, having more than enough of their own internally displaced peoples from Abkhazia and South Ossetia with which to deal. Having turned to a stall of oranges, she picks one up, hoping that those eyes will pass on. She gets a glare of outrage from the stall-keeper instead, so she outs it back and turns away.

She desperately needs an exit strategy, and soon.

She can't go to the British; they betrayed her team. Not for the first time since that debacle, she rues the fact that she had let her intuition be overruled when the order came through to launch the operation prematurely. Thanks to the ambush someone had organised, she's currently nursing a variety of injuries. First, there is the bullet wound—a graze that opened her left wrist and left her fumble-fingered and helpless. When she'd crawled out of the smoke-filled corridor back into the room where the hostages had been held, the rope to the roof gave her an exit from the shooting, but when her damaged wrist gave way over the wall of the compound, she'd fallen badly and has the black and blue bruises to show for it. The team always had a contingency plan, and she'd made her way to the agreed rendezvous site for it—this market—and waited in vain for their ride or any of the others to arrive. The missing driver is yet another piece of evidence; the operation had been compromised from the start. Without transport, she is left to fend for herself, and the means for making her own way out of the country are limited. The Americans have a tiny presence here in Tbilisi, and she has personal reasons to avoid them just as she does the British, given how their last mission for the CIA failed to deliver. For all she knows, the betrayal might have originally come from them in retaliation.

The more she considers the reality of her situation, the more she becomes convinced that the only way she's going to get out of Tbilisi is by finding someone in the trade from a non-Western country. A fellow spy might well be interested in exchanging information for passage away from this disaster. Georgia is swarming with Russian ones; they are keeping an eye out for developments that will further their interests in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Making contact with one of them and getting to Moscow shall be her Plan A.

She's returned to the market as the most likely place to spot someone but worries that she is equally vulnerable to prying eyes. Her bruises and likely cracked rib add an air of authenticity as she shifts into the bent-over shape of an ancient crone and shuffles further away from the stream of shoppers in the street market. Her limp is real, too: soft tissue damage from the fall makes walking on her ankle hurt like hell since she's not had the time or place to heal. As her vision starts to tunnel from the pain and the ensuing nausea, Rosemary reaches out to grab a tent pole holding up the awning over a dried fruit stall. Her hand is shaking with a frailty that is in keeping with the disguise. If she is not careful, she is going to pass out.

Eyes closed and head bowed down to try to catch her breath and ride the nausea out, she is totally unprepared for the strong pair of hands that suddenly appear from nowhere, grabbing her shoulders roughly from behind, shoving her further into the shadows. Before she can react, one of those hands is repositioned against her neck and she feels the unmistakable shape of a gun muzzle pressed into her throat.

"Don't move. Don't speak, don't even think of resisting."

She sifts through the words, only realising after a moment that they have been spoken in heavily accented English rather than Georgian, or Pashto.

"What do you want?" She breathes softly, unconsciously mimicking his accent.

"It's more about what you want." The other hand shifts away from her arm, up to the side of her neck and she feels the prick of a needle.

This time, she loses the struggle to stay conscious.

oOoOoOoOo

As she starts to surface from the drugs, Rosemary's experienced enough to hide the fact from whoever might be watching her. Even so, it doesn't take much to realise that she's no longer wearing a burka; she's naked, with her forearms and legs from the knees down to her ankles bound tight to what feels to be a chair. Her ears tell her that there is another person in the room; she can hear his breathing and fidgeting as he waits for her to shrug off whatever he'd given her. She hears the sound of a lighter and then smells a thick tobacco aroma. Hoping that his nicotine habit will distract him, she runs a quick diagnostic check around her various injuries, which suggests that nothing has been aggravated. There is no tell-tale vaginal pain she can detect, which suggests that despite her nudity, there has been no sexual abuse. If anything, being forced into non-movement for several hours might have helped with the healing. Tightening her muscles slowly to avoid being seen, she surreptitiously tests the bonds which feel like duct tape.

"Don't bother."

The deep, gravelly voice is the same that had spoken to her in the marketplace. This time it is coming from behind her and she is able to realise that, while he may be speaking in English, the accent is not that of an American or a Brit. This is a native Georgian speaker.

Not for the first time, she wishes she spoke the language; it had been the one real weak spot in their plans that none of the four of them did. Ajay's Arabic was useless, and Rosemary's Russian would have marked her out as the enemy more surely than engaging people in English.

There simply had been no time to acquire local support. Ammo had been specific: "In and out; no more than 48 hours in the country. We've set it up so that all you have to do is get the Ambassador and her husband out of the consulate and into the car that we will have waiting to drive you to Rastavi. A light aircraft there will get you across the border to safety in Azerbaijan." Then, the phone call had come through from Ammo's PA to accelerate the plan, bumping it earlier another seven hours. That gave them very little time to prepare.

Rosemary opens her eyes to get a better sense of where she is, and is relieved to find that the premises are not what she would have expected if her captor had been one of the Georgian security services people. She's in what looks to be a storage room, dim twilight coming from a broken dirty pane of a tiny window. If her lack of hunger is anything to go by, this is the same day as she was captured, approximately six hours later.

Training kicks in and tells her that the entrance must be behind her, from where the voice also came.

The man who spoke moves around her chair, carrying a laptop which he opens and positions on a dusty crate in front of her. It comes to life showing an image of Big Ben. The man, who is nearly two meters in height, dark-haired and bushy eye-browed, commands: "Listen."

"Welcome to Tbilisi, Rosemary." The voice is synthesised, presumably to protect the owner's anonymity. That is noticed in a moment, but less important than its use of her name.

"If you are wondering how I know your name, it was the most likely. Alex could be a shortened version of Alexandra, but no male is going to be called Rosemary."

This time she lets the sigh be audible. Knowledge of her name and that of at least one of her team conflicts with the whole set-up of the room. Is the CIA behind all of this, just as she had suspected?

Unconsciously, she stiffens on the hard metal chair.

"No, this is not our American friends."

Rosemary mutters a curse under her breath. How is it possible that whoever is on the other end of the webcam is able to deduce her thinking so well?

She decides to engage with this unknown, see if conversation might yield some clues. She modulates her accent into something vaguely mid-Atlantic. "What do you want?"

There is a pause that lengthens, but then: "It's more about what you want, which I presume is a way out of this hell-hole."

"What about the others?" She has to try to find out what her captor knows.

Again, a delay. Is it because there is some distance between this room and the interrogator? Could it be someone in a different country? Or just a crap wi-fi signal?

The voice resumes, "Not in the picture anymore; casualties of the botched operation; thanks to me, A.G.R.A is no more. Sorry about that, but your team was expendable in the pursuit of a greater purpose."

The voice's use of those particular initials set off a frisson of fear. Whoever this is, knows too much about the operation and is claiming to be the one responsible for its failure.

She tenses her pelvic floor, trying to determine if the USB drive is still in its usual place. She used to tease Gabriel that it's easier for a woman, when he'd had to remove his from his rectum every time he had to have a shit. The coil stopped her periods, and the memory stick was almost identical to a tampon in size and weight, making her vagina the best hiding place. In a Muslim country, it was highly unlikely that anyone would go investigating up there but then again, she's not dealing with locals, now.

The initials are on the memory stick in nail polish. She prays that it is as far as her interrogator had got. The contents should be safely encrypted.

"Interesting exercise in cryptography, I have to say," continues the synthetic, unemotional voice that sounds eerily as if Stephen Hawking is conducting the interrogation.

Sweat prickles the nape of Rosemary's neck. Has this person broken the code? She knew that GCHQ couldn't do it, and neither Langley or the NSA had been able to, either.

"You have an impressive CV, my dear. Could prove rather useful."

Is this a taunt? A suggestion that the person behind the voice had broken the code, when in fact he hadn't? She'd been reliably informed it couldn't be broken, given that the cipher was only known by the four of them. Had this voice been able to capture one of the others? Had they been tortured to give up the key? Her mind is racing to know how far this betrayal has gone.

The synthetic voice crackles into life again: "It's a pity that Gabriel had to die; he's quite talented when it comes to IT things, if this code is anything to go by. I suppose the GRU knows how to train its hackers."

Rosemary closes her eyes in dismay, no longer caring if the webcam on the laptop can see her. Whoever has captured her has managed to crack the memory stick—they know everything, now. Gabriel wasn't always Gabriel. He was born Gavriil Illyovich Volkov, and he was trained in the GRU's Spetsnaz. Of the three men in the team, Mary had always been closest to Gabe. They spoke Russian to each other, which neither Alex nor Ajay understood.

She takes a moment to mourn the loss of him. The fact that whoever is on the other end of this conversation knew who Gabriel really was tells her that the content of the memory stick is known. The fact that she is still alive puzzles her—until she recalls the comment 'could be useful'.

Perhaps she can negotiate her way out of this. "What can I do for you?"

She waits out the now-predictable pause. The Hawking voice responds, "Compliments on adopting the right attitude, my dear. You and I can do business. I have a package that I need to have moved from this country across a border and then to Moscow. It is not a job for an amateur. I believe you have a reason to want to follow that same route. Am I right?"

She nods warily.

"Good. In return for sparing your life and giving you the means to escape, I ask only two things in return. First, that you protect the package with your life, if necessary. And second, if the mission is successful, you will be called upon at some later date to do me a service. Given your skill set, that could be very handy indeed. A quid pro quo, if you will."

There is a pause, as if he expected her to say something. She keeps quiet; wanting his captor to sweat a bit.

"Tamaz Kipiani will see to your injuries and bring you food and water. When you have recovered, we will speak again. Don't try to leave; you will be killed. Gavrill tried, failed and paid the price. You are only useful to me if you are alive."

Rosemary finds that her anger at Gabe's death sharpens her tongue. "Why should I trust you? You've just admitted to setting up the ambush and killing at least one if not more of my teammates. Why would that make me willing to cooperate?"

After a moment—making her wonder if he is relying on asynchronous translation—the voice responds "The alternative is to earn favour by handing you over to the security services here in Georgia. The Sakartvelos Dazvervis Samsakhuri will be far less willing to keep you alive; their overzealous interrogation tactics have already killed one of the people who took the ambassador hostage. It seems they don't take kindly to someone taking hostages. I have let them believe that it was Abkhazian terrorists who were responsible."

She digests this news. She had not been told anything about who the people who had taken the UK consulate and its people as hostages were, only about how to get the Ambassador and her husband out. Only being given half the story was part and parcel of a mercenary's lot. It made sense that freelancers were seldom trusted with all of the intelligence. It was standard procedure that they were given only the bare minimum needed to execute their mission.

Perhaps this Hawking-voiced interrogator was the one who had been behind the original hostage-taking; she knows that there is a lot here she doesn't understand. Starting with the first one, she asks, "Why would you trust me?"

The synthesized laugh sounds very odd, but she guesses that machine voices haven't quite got the knack yet. "Because you have no real alternative; think of this as a fortuitous collision of your needs and mine."

It may not be the way she would have preferred to exit Georgia, but if the voice is not spinning a tale, what is on offer is better than any of the alternatives she can imagine.

Mary nods, bowing to the inevitable. Feigning co-operation will, at the very least, buy her time.

oOoOoOoOo

The next five days crawl by. That she is in the hands of someone used to dealing with prisoners becomes clear. She is not given clothing, and there is nowhere to hide anything that might be a tool, even if she'd been able to find one. While she had still been taped to the metal chair, the guard had freed her left hand and arm, cleaning and bandaging the track of the bullet across her wrist. He knew what he was doing, someone with a reasonable amount of battlefield first aid was her guess. In AGRA, she'd been the one who had learned a field nurse's skills so an injured member could be patched up until proper medical help was available.

While her damaged left wrist slowly heals, her right remains handcuffed and chained to a metal ring in the wall. Enforced bedrest seems to be sorting her ankle, too. She has just enough slack in the chain to be able to move on and off the camp bed to use the plastic bucket as a loo. When she is told to lie on the bed, Tamaz pushes a tray to what will be just within her reach when she is off the bed and at the limit of the chain. He uses a stout stick to do the pushing of the tray, avoiding coming anywhere near her. He's taking no chances.

Water is in a plastic bottle that she has to roll across the floor to him when it's empty. Food appears on the tray twice a day in the form of a paper plate of rice with a slop of some sort of potato stew. It has an unusual flavour—not unpleasant, but hard to place. She fights the boredom by trying to identify the constituent ingredients. Quite salty, and a hefty dose of garlic that she realises she can also smell on the breath of the guard when he isn't busy smoking. The fresh herbs are easy: flat-leaf parsley and purple-leafed basil. She can also detect coriander and paprika as well as caraway seeds. But, there are other things that are distinctly foreign to her taste buds.*

Tamaz, besides being her warden, is also the cook. He prepares the simple meals on a primus stove outside of the room. Rosemary tries to engage him in conversation, but it would seem that her captor has instructed him not to speak to her. Each morning, the tray has a new bandage, an antiseptic wipe and pre-cut tape to hold it in place. No chance of getting a pair of scissors that could be used as a weapon.

She lies there, hour after hour in the drowsy heat, going through each and every minute of their operation to work out how it all went wrong. When she isn't doing that or asleep, she tries to listen in the hope of hearing something outside the room that will tell her where she is being held. Not somewhere in the centre, that is clear. There is little sound of traffic or the hubbub of a densely populated urban area. Nor are there any sounds that would come from a rural countryside setting—no animal noises, bells on cattle or sheep, a dog barking in the distance. No scent of a fire of wood or dung. Nothing really, apart from the wind and the occasional rattle of the hut's window frames or door.

On the fifth day, however, there is a change. A car comes up what sounds like a rough track and stops outside. Even standing on the bed and craning her neck, she's still too short to see out the window, but can hear Tamaz talking to someone. Then the car door slams and it is off back down the track, its springs creaking through what sounds like a whole series of potholes.

Tamaz re-enters the room, carrying a duffle bag. She watches him sling it across the floor until it lands within reach.

"Get dressed and prepare. In four days, I move you."

Author's Notes:

*Svetani Salt is a mixture of dried coriander, dried dill, blue fenugreek, dried red pepper, dried marigold petals, cumin seeds, mixed with coarse white salt and powdered garlic.